A Tale of Two Sheriffs

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
First published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, November 2007

Sheriff Clark isn't the first to fall from grace,

but a a predecessor 100 years ago eventually rose again

Once upon a time, there was a sheriff who lived in Crook County. He was well liked by his voters, and they returned him over and over again to public office. Even when confronted with a charge of abusing that office, he still was elected to another term by voters.
Who was this sheriff who got himself into such hot water? Meet John Newton Williamson, who was elected county sheriff of Crook County in 1886.

He served for just two years, but he must have been doing something right. He so impressed the voters of Crook County that they immediately sent him on to Salem to serve as state representative. Apparently he did good work there as well because just two years later moved up to the state senate. And from there it was only a short hop to the federal level—a position he attained in 1903, when voters sent him to Washington, D.C., as one of the state’s two members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

What an exciting period that must have been for a farmer-turned-local-politician-turned congressman. Williamson, who was born and raised in rural Lane County, was hardly a product of the big city. Yet here was an unparalleled opportunity make history at a point in our country’s history where our nation was just coming into its own in the world.

This was the period of Teddy Roosevelt, and his fight against the trusts. It was the era of progressivism, when rights were being extended to the American working class for the first time. The U.S. was flexing newfound muscle in South and Central America, where it gained rights to build a canal across Panama during Williamson’s congressional tenure, and technology and science were reaching new heights with the invention of airplanes, telephones and even ideas as complex as the theory of relativity.

It must have seemed to Williamson and others that anything was possible, including the transformation of a Crook County farmer into a man of power, influence and position.
Regrettably for Williamson, power, influence and position were not what history would have in story for him. Because while great things were happening in the nation’s capital, scandal was brewing at home, specifically one of the sorriest moments of Oregon history, the Oregon Land Fraud Scandal.

The affair involved allegations that most of Oregon’s congressional delegation was involved illegal acquisition of public lands or at least in helping friends acquire the same lands illegally. Three of Oregon’s four representatives and senators, including Williamson, were caught up in the affair and indicted. By 1905, Senator Williamson--the Pride of Prineville--was brought low by judge and jury, and the community mourned its misfortune that its first (and only) federally elected official didn’t bring the credit to the community that it had hoped for.

But that wasn’t the end of Williamson. Convinced of his own innocence, the one-time sheriff took his take to the U.S. Supreme Court, where eventually right won out.

I wonder what he thought while he waited for his appeal to be heard. He must have wondered why he ever started down this path of public service in the first place. I suspect he wasn’t any too appreciative either of his former friends and close associates whose testimony was the basis for his conviction.

But time, it turned out, provided the vindication Williamson was hoping for.

In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the convictions of both Williamson and his fellow representative. The Court found that the prosecution had engaged in gross misconduct involving a botched investigation and witness tampering in order to further the career of an ambitious U.S. attorney. While the Court stopped short of saying that the congressmen were innocent of the charges brought against them, it found clearly that the way the case was prosecuted was both malicious and suspicious.

In the end, it all came out right for Sheriff Williamson. And as we wait patiently or impatiently for a verdict in the case of a current sheriff indicted on charges of trying to intimidate his officers from running against him, I too am hoping for a positive outcome—both for the sheriff and the community.

I have no inside track into what the judge in this case is going to decide, and if there was wrongdoing, he has a responsibility to identify it and sanction it appropriately. But whatever the final outcome of this case, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Sheriff Clark has served a long and distinguished career with Crook County, and that regardless of the outcome of this present trial, we owe him thanks for his good work in addition to censure for anything he may have done wrong.
By any measure, the department run by Sheriff Clark today is a far sight better than the department he inherited in 1987. The professionalism and service Sheriff Clark has introduced to the organization has served us all well.

Sheriff Williamson ultimately returned to Crook County after he was exonerated. He gave up politics, returned to farming and eventually became postmaster—a capacity in which he continue to serve Prineville for years to come. He died well respected and beloved in 1943.

Just over 100 years later, we can’t know what fate history has in mind for us this time. Let’s hope the result is equally benign for all involved.